The securities industry in the United States is governed by a regulatory framework based on the concept that all investors and other interested parties should have access to certain basic facts about an investment prior to buying it. To achieve this, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) requires public corporations to disclose meaningful financial and other information to the public. In addition to what is required by the SEC, many corporations release a wide range of information to investors and other interested parties regarding the present and future performance of the corporation. Parties may then use this information to judge for themselves if a corporation's securities are a good investment.
Corporate financial guidance (“Guidance”) is the primary means by which corporations communicate their plans, goals, and expectations to investors and other interested parties. Guidance may be conveyed through various events and mediums such as press releases, earnings conference calls, conference presentations, analyst meetings, and SEC filings. Guidance is most commonly conveyed in an unstructured format using written or spoken prepared text or as answers to analysts' questions.
Although the guidance is generally made public, there are few means in the investor-relations marketplace for investors or other interested parties to obtain comprehensive company-issued guidance from a single source. When company-issued guidance events and mediums are obtained, parties must sort through the large amount of information contained in the various events and mediums to determine the relevant guidance data.
It is therefore desired to provide a system and method for collecting and storing investment guidance data to enable investors and/or other interested parties to quickly access data relevant to their investment decision. It is a further desired to provide a system and method for providing context to the guidance data and a means to determine the accuracy and reliability of the guidance data.